EC software law could divide open source
Summary
Topics
The Commission proposes software companies be held liable in the EU for the security and efficacy of their products.
David Mitchell, senior vice president of IT Research at Ovum, thinks this may lead to a situation boosting current open-source vendors' business models, but making it more difficult for independent developers to thrive.
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The Commission proposal is likely to make vendors force customers into support and maintenance agreements upon each purchase, in order to help the former fulfill warranty obligations, said Mitchell.
This is already in line with the business models of current open-source vendors such as Red Hat and Canonical, which sell support services. On the other hand, the "garage open-source model" of independent developers who do not have the scale to guarantee their products at that level, will likely suffer, Mitchell said in an interview with ZDNet Asia.
Bryan Tan, director at Keystone Law Corporation, had predicted in an earlier blog post the "caving in" of open-source software due to similar worries over liability on the parts of independent developers.
"Gone are the days where software could be written in a garage by two guys," Tan wrote.
Tan also told ZDNet Asia the proposed law would likely inflate prices for consumers outside the EU, as well — including the Asia-Pacific region, as a result of the vendors' need to provide insurance. Furthermore, the "death" of some smaller vendors would lead to increased prices as well from lack of competition, he added.
While the Commission has said the proposal is in the interest of consumers, Ovum's Mitchell thinks there will be a "huge amount of market uncertainty" created.
"Customers will find that their existing support and maintenance agreements are now ambiguous, or in contradiction with any new legislation," he said. Businesses would also have to undertake longer testing cycles, resulting in project delays, Mitchell added.
Realistically, liability will be hard to pinpoint, because of the inter-dependency between hardware and software, Mitchell noted. The failure of a piece of software could be blamed on another installed software or hardware portion.
"[The legislation] promises to be a lawyer's dream [come true] but not to deliver any tangible benefit for the customers," he said.
However, Stanley Lai, partner at Allen & Gledhill, thinks consumers will benefit. While he agrees that software prices will likely go up, "it remains to be seen whether consumers will consider that the price to be paid in return for quality assurance is an adverse effect".
Lai also said it is "premature and over-simplistic" to predict the demise of open-source software. He said with code open and more easily-corrected — the oft-quoted "many eyeballs" effect — users and consumers of open-source software may be more likely to get errors fixed through the community and less likely to pursue direct recourse to liability under the proposed legislation.
This article was originally posted on ZDNet Asia.
Talkback Most Recent of 103 Talkback(s)
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I think I'll stay with the USA . . .
I think I'll be staying in the USA, outside the reach of these EU people, thanks.
CobraA111th Jun 2009 -
I'll sue you anyway...
for not complying with european laws
But i do agree that the European Committee goes to far with this proposal.
Arnout Groen11th Jun 2009 -
Considering there are allready US laws for negligence
IF you kill someone with your crappy code, and its shown it's because of your crappy code you created without correct engineering principles.
IN the US of A, you are ALLREADY LIABLE for your actions.
Get over it, and welcome to the real world..
Aussie_Troll12th Jun 2009 -
Europe going back to using abacuses
The EC is truly brilliant! This will give China and other developing countries an opportunity to overtake Europe.
P. Douglas11th Jun 2009 -
No_Ax_to_Grind11th Jun 2009 -
P. Douglas11th Jun 2009
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The EC needs slapped down.
Before long, every company will simply pull every product
out of the EC. The new GPL will start...
Preamble
The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license
for software and other kinds of works and applies to all
non EU countries. EU countries shall not be allowed to use GNU General Public Licensed products.
The licenses for most software and other practical works
are designed to take away your freedom to share and
change the works. By contrast,...
Bruizer11th Jun 2009 -
Software users need a bill of rights!
We license software and have no rights. Software companies quit supporting product and we are s**t out of luck. IF this happens the source code should be made open source. Since open source is everyone code and anyone can see how it works, change it, maintain it, and no one is selling it then there should be no legal reason to sue anyone for any liability. Open source is not the same as proprietary software in a black box costing big $ that does not perform as stated. EULA must change!!
LittleGuy11th Jun 2009 -
Her's an idea, be a big boy and pick something else
You don't like product "A", use product B, C, D, E, F, G, etc.
Don't like that, write your own code.No_Ax_to_Grind11th Jun 2009 -
Euro Morons
Socilistic morons, nuff said.No_Ax_to_Grind11th Jun 2009 -
You are a rude twat!
Learn to spell understand the intelligence of the topic being discussed also understand that socialism is in the minority in Europe,read and understand what it means do not confuse socialism for another name for communism.I fully appreciate that you are an American which usually breeds an excellent level of intelligencer,but there is a prevalent number that can not think outside the box and consistently pass comment on subjects that they have no idea about.
Richard Turpin12th Jun 2009 -
RE: EC software law could divide open source
Excellent: its about time software development was draged kicking and screaming into a real engineering disipline like every other professional field.
Having been trained in Engineering (not initially software), its second nature to me (and every other engineer) that you dont create product with errors, ANY ERRORS, you job as an engineer is to create working usable product, not something with faults !!.
And dont tell me that software is too complicated to create without lots of errors, crap, ive written software all my life, and my job depends upon it working and working correctly, no faults, (programmers call them BUGS) engineers call them design errors that need to be corrected before it becomes a product and never before.
Good, the sooner this happens the BETTER..Aussie_Troll11th Jun 2009 -
Bull, show me your perfect code.
It does not exist, period!No_Ax_to_Grind11th Jun 2009 -
I agree!
unless he shows some Hello world! 'program'.
Linux Geek11th Jun 2009 -
Not even then...
Did he write the BIOS? How about the OS? How about 10,000 differnt device drivers? Re-wrote all the video and audio codecs on the planet? Has he tested for every Intel or AMD erata?
Because as anyone that has ever written a line of code knows, anyone of them can turn your "perfect code" into "design faults".No_Ax_to_Grind11th Jun 2009
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